All Done Here

It’s New Year’s Eve, and I’ve been trying to complete my normal ritual of cleaning the house and getting to bed at my usual time.  I’ve never seen the point of toasting the new year at midnight, when it’s dark and cold.  I enjoy instead getting up at sunrise on New Year’s Day.

However, I’m having a hard time this year because I’m not looking forward to tomorrow.  I’ve achieved none of the goals I set for myself this year.  I didn’t finish any books or screenplays.  I didn’t find a job.  I didn’t lose any weight.  I didn’t finish mourning Hal.  Essentially, I’m no better off this year than I was last year or the year before that.

I don’t have anything to look forward in the New Year.  Instead, I have a list of things I have to endure, a list of things to give up.  I feel like a person who had one year to live and now realizes she wasted most of it.   Only it’s not me that’s dying, it’s my stories and my characters.  I will go back to work next year, assuming I can find a job, and the characters I’ve spent the last year falling in love with will die of neglect.  I don’t have the energy to both work and write.

In any case, this blog is done.  I will take it, along with my first blog, and combine it into a memoir of what my life has been like since my husband died.  Maybe someone will find it instructive.   I’m not sure I did.

Home Stretch

It’s been more than a month since my last post.  Since then I’ve gotten part-time work as a writer, hit a wall with my screenplay, done some work for screen credit and gotten out some older projects with the goal of working on them again.  None of this, however, is what I want to write about today.

In less than a month, I will have been in Denver for a year.  It’s been less productive than I hoped; I don’t have a contest-ready screenplay, a publishable novel or a memoir nicely assembled from my journal entries and blog posts.

I realize now that I had a lot of hard work to do since moving to Colorado, and very little of it had to do with writing.  I’ve been upset that I’m not writing more, writing on a more regular schedule or writing better.  In the meantime, I’ve been ignoring–try to ignore–my grief.  I’ve been going to writers groups instead of grief support groups, paying for writing classes instead of psychotherapy.

Despite having my priorities turned around, it would seem that I got the work done.    If I look at how I spent my days since Hal died, I’ve probably worked a good 40 years a week at grieving and getting my life together.  I even got paid for this work, since I used his life insurance proceeds to meet my expenses while I was doing it.  Seen in this way, my writing has been a good, solid hobby that gave me something to do in my spare time.

And now, as the year is coming to an end, I’m about to lose my job.   It seems to me now that I shouldn’t end this blog on December 4, the first anniversary of my arrival in Colorado, or on December 31, when the calendar year comes to an end.  Instead (unless I change my mind), I’ll wrap up this blog when I get a job that meets my living expenses.

For now, I’ll try to enjoy the holiday season.  It will be my 4th Thanksgiving and Christmas without Hal, but my second Christmas with my sister’s family.  I’ll try to think of myself as on an extended vacation from work.  I’ll write and play with my nieces and nephew.  The job hunt will begin in earnest on January 1, 2011.

 

 

No Cow Today

Yesterday I got up after a good night’s sleep (a rarity) eager to write the next 10 pages or so of my novel.  I had a really good idea, and I was sure it would be brilliant, insightful, poetic, etc.

Then I opened my email program and found a hateful message from someone I’d never met, a lurker on one of my discussion groups who objected to something I posted earlier in the week.

As a result, I wrote nothing yesterday.  Or more accurately, I wrote about 5 drafts to this blog, then erased them.  I finally gave up and spent the evening in front of the TV.

For someone like me, who is struggling with depression and all that goes with it, a single nasty email is devastating.  It as if I were solving one of those word puzzles where you change one letter at a time to get a new word, beginning with “drug” and ending with “brig.”  (Drug, drag, brag, brig)  So my day went something like this:

C.D. didn’t like what I said –> I said the wrong thing. –>  I always say the wrong thing. –>  I never do anything right. –>  No one likes anything that I do. –>  No one likes my writing. –>  No one likes me. –>  I’ll never find anyone to love me.  –>  I’ll never make it as a writer. –>  I’ll never get a job. –>  I’m going to end up broke. –>  I’m going to be a burden to my family. –>  I’m worth more to my family dead than alive. –>  Why don’t I just die and leave my money to my family?

So, thanks for nothing, C.D.  Jerk.

As usual, a night of TV followed by sleep has turned my attitude around a bit, and this morning I sat down with new determination to write.  I imagine myself as a successful author, and C.D., forgetting about the nasty email he sent me yesterday, would one day want to meet me.  I imagine myself telling him to do something that’s anatomically impossible.

It’s got me thinking about the way I do things.  Because I checked my email first thing upon sitting at my desk, I lost an entire day of writing.  If only I’d done the writing first, then checked my email at the end of the day, just before turning on Jeopardy!

Should I isolate myself from the outside world so nothing can ruin my writing day?  Can I do that every day?  Or should I have days where I do my research, set my schedule, go to appointments and keep up with my online contacts and other days when I remove myself from this world and live in the world of my novel?

Trying to figure these things out is tortuous.  The problem with creative work is that no one can tell you exactly how to do it.  There’s no step-by-step process for writing.  As a result, I’m continually frustrated.  Do I write in the mornings or late at night?  Do I take frequent breaks or none?  Do I outline my story or just do what Stephen King does–put my characters in peril and see what happens?  Is it possible to write full time?  Do I write a little every day or a lot a couple of days a week?  Do I edit as I go or just gut it out and get to the end?  When do I do my filing?  What should I be reading while I write?

I hope that by the time I finish this novel, I’ll have figured these things out and my next novel will go faster and easier.  The problem is that this assumes that the rest of my life won’t change significantly, and if nothing is going to change, why am I bothering to write?

Ka-Thump!

I’ve been sitting here, my cursor at the left margin, staring at this photo, for about an hour, trying to think of an appropriate metaphor for the way I’m feeling lately.  I started to construct an elaborate parallel between an alternative to Guth’s inflation theory of cosmology and my life, but gave up on it when I realized it wouldn’t work unless I spent several paragraphs contrasting the new theory with the old and discussing cosmology in general.

So here’s where I finally landed:  Zombies.

There exists the concept of the philosophical zombie (p-zombie), a creature that mimics human behavior perfectly but without conscious experience.  Poke it with a stick and it will recoil and claim to be in pain, but is it really so if the p-zombie isn’t consciously able to perceive pain?  P-zombies are used in thought experiments by philosophers and psychologists.

I’ve been a grief zombie.  I’ve been un-dead.

When I learned that my husband was terminal, I figured I would “handle it” fairly well.  I knew myself to be a strong, intelligent, determined woman.   A few months later, after a summer when it seemed that he would beat the odds and survive, I held his hand as his heart stopped beating. It seemed that my own heart stopped, too.

Since then, I wake up and go to sleep, I eat and drink, I bathe and brush my teeth, I clean my apartment and do my laundry, I buy groceries and gas, I spend time with my family, I watch TV.  But like Romero’s zombies who gather at the mall, I only do these things out of habit. I’ve been shuffling through my days, barely aware of my surroundings.

A couple of weeks ago, I caught myself dancing in my kitchen.  It was as if my long dormant heart had momentarily come back to life–ka-thump!  I was so astonished that I stopped dancing and stood stock-still, amazed.

I’m looking forward to my next heartbeat.

Is It Me or Is It Colorado?

In the 1980s I moved 5 times.

I remember each move as a positive experience, a chance to explore new places, meet new people, learn a new job.  Each was directed by the Air Force, who has moving all figured out.  Shortly after receiving my orders, I was always contacted by someone at my new base whose job it was to make my move easier, taking me on a tour of the area, introducing me to my coworkers and giving me any help I needed to settle into my new home and my new job.

Wherever I was stationed, I met local people who had never considered moving from their home town.  That was something I couldn’t understand at the time because I thought moving was great fun.  The only thing I didn’t like about moving is that I wasn’t doing it often enough.

In 1988 Hal and I moved to the Virginia Peninsula and eventually left the military.  We stayed there for 21 years.  Although my decision to move to Colorado was prompted by Hal’s death, I nevertheless looked forward to meeting new people and doing new things.  It was the first time moving had been my choice, and I expected that this would make it even better.

It hasn’t worked out the way I thought it would.  It’s surprising to me how hard it has been without the kind of assistance the Air Force provided me.  I joined a writers organization and attended some critique groups, but I felt less than welcome.  It seemed that because I was new to the group, the other members assumed I must be new to writing; they lectured me as if I knew nothing.  I finally found a critique group where I feel comfortable, but I worry constantly that I will do or say something that will result in my expulsion.

Back in Virginia, my social circle largely consisted of people I knew from Toastmasters, so this spring I tried to find a Toastmasters club to join.  I never made it to the first meeting because I couldn’t find the location, and no one had given me a phone number to call and get help.  The second club seemed happy to have me but never contacted me afterward to invite me to return.  This behavior would have been unprecedented in Virginia.

There are days when I’m sure it’s the people here, that Coloradans are more insular than Virginians, that they don’t deal well with new people.  Maybe it’s because in Virginia I was surrounded by a half dozen military bases, and people came and went a lot more often than they do in Denver.  There are days when I tell myself that it’s not me, it’s everyone else that’s to blame for my bad experiences so far.

But there are days–today is one of them–that I’m convinced that it is me, that I can’t fit in, that there’s something about me that people don’t like, some cultural taboo unique to Colorado that I’m breaking, and that moving here was a terrible mistake.

It didn’t take much to put me in this state of mind.  I’m attending a writing conference this weekend, and volunteered to moderate one of the workshops.  I was told that I would be invited to a kick-off party tonight for all the volunteers, but I have yet to be informed where and when this party will be.  Is this an oversight by the organizers or have I been snubbed?  I won’t ask because today I’m afraid  it’s the latter.

This has been enough to make the upcoming conference something I’m now dreading.  I don’t enjoy crowds because I’m convinced that I’m the largest person in the room and so do my best to avoid drawing attention to myself, usually by sitting in a corner and not speaking to anyone.  When meeting new people, I worry that I will talk too much and end up not talking enough.  What this means is that I generally avoid parties, but I was planning to attend this one in order to ease myself into the conference.

Yesterday I allowed myself to think that when I got to the editor’s workshop, everyone would love my work and say that I have talent.  Today I’m sure the consensus will be that I should stop wasting my time.

Today I’m wondering how many garbage bags it will take to pack up everything related to writing and carry it all to the dumpster.  I’m thinking about how much roomier my tiny apartment would be if I did that–how I could rearrange my furniture for evenings and weekends spent in front of the television instead of at my desk.  Today I’m wondering if I wouldn’t be happier just to go to work and come home to Stouffer’s and Jeopardy! Maybe I’ll be grateful to have someone relieve me of my delusions.

I don’t think I’m going to be able to write today.

Can’t I Just Win the Lottery?

The Identity Crisis Cow

Last Tuesday I met with my financial advisor, who seemed to be near panic about my investments.  He wanted me to know that I will be out of funds by the end of next year, and I’m not putting anything into my retirement funds, which means I’ll be out of money by age 70.  He seemed to think that I was unaware of this.  “I know,” I kept saying, but that didn’t seem to do any good.  I ended up promising him that I will go back to work in September.

I hate the idea of going back to work.  I only want to work on my writing projects.  Going to work involves wearing clothes that are considerably less comfortable than shorts and a tee shirt.  It involves getting up early every morning and being in a hurry.  It means leaving the house for most of every day.  It means coming home tired, probably too tired to cook for myself.  It means not having time to write.

I’m looking for work nonetheless.  Last Monday I heard about an opening at the FBI, which seemed both  fortuitous and ironic.  A government job with a 1-mile commute was too good to pass up, especially since it would get me the insight I need to finish my screenplay and novel.  I worried, though, that the FBI would frown upon my writing about it and would forbid me to do it.  After weighing the pros and cons, I sent in my application.  I was only mildly disappointed when I didn’t qualify for the job.

On Thursday I went to a class about how to set up a website to bring in passive income.  It was very much an oxymoronic idea, because earning a passive income involves doing an incredible amount of work.  By the end of the class I was convinced that this was the worst way to try to earn any money, but on Friday I applied for a job that would involve exactly this kind of work.

I ran across a message on my Denver Mensa email list about a part-time job, and on Friday I earned from the person offering the job.  He runs a dance studio in Boulder and also puts together adventure tours.  He needs someone to make use of the Internet and social networking to market both these.  I spent the day putting together a cover letter, a shorter version of my resume and a list of ideas, but I haven’t heard back from him.  I suggested that he hire a webmaster, because I didn’t want to build his web sites, but I was willing to do the writing that the webmaster won’t.  I have to wonder if he didn’t just take my ideas and hire someone who was willing to do both.

He wouldn’t have liked me anyway, I think.  He’s in incredible shape, climbing mountains and teaching ballroom dance.  He’ll see me as someone who can’t possibly understand what he does.  Ah, well.

On Saturday I attended an RMFW presentation on digital publishing.  This is definitely the way that publishing is going to go, and that computer work I don’t want to do is going to be necessary.  My problem remains that there’s no quality assurance on digitally published books–anyone can do it, no matter how bad their books are.  I have resisted this idea because I don’t want my good books to be among all the bad books in Amazon’s digital download catalog–traditional publishing, with all its obstacles, still gives the reader some assurance that the book is worth reading.  I may have no choice, however.

The library where I learned about digital publishing is near a Whole Foods store, so I stopped in to see what might be good to buy there.  I left with 3 bags of groceries, but the best were a box of salad and a bottle of really good bleu cheese dressing.  For some reason, I can’t make salads at home that are as good as those I get in restaurants or even in grocery store salad bars.  I couldn’t wait to get home to eat it, but I was already ravenous.  I bought a large container of butternut squash and crab bisque and drank it in the truck.  I’d never tasted better soup, but then hunger makes everything taste better.

On Sunday I went to my screenwriting workshop with no pages except for a description of my criminal conspiracy for the others to shoot full of holes for me.  I got home with two hours to try to put together some lunch, clean my apartment and pack a tote bag before my sister arrived.  She won tickets to the Mile-High Music Festival, worth $100 each, and invited me to go with her to see Train, Weezer and Dave Matthews.  I did an incredible amount of walking for me, and was so exhausted when I got home I could barely find the energy to wash the soccer field dirt off myself before falling into bed.  It was worth it, though.

Today a Facebook friend let me know about a job opening at the Denver Botanical Gardens.  I’ll probably spend most of today putting my application together for that job, which is going to be a feat considering how tired I am.

Tomorrow I’m attending a class that will help me “re-tool” my resume after seeing a bariatric specialist about loosening my gastric band.  I hope that it will help me eat enough good foods to give me the energy to get some exercise and get in better shape–I hope that at this point, eating more will lead to weighing less.  It seems to be a good month for oxymoronic ideas.

On Thursday I have my writers group in Boulder followed by a late lunch with my sister and her kids, who will no doubt talk nonstop about their first week of school.  I’m looking forward to that.    I’ll spend the rest of my week working on pages for my screenwriting workshop on Sunday, assuming I don’t have to take time out to be in a funk because no one in my writers group likes my work.

As I write this entry, I’m listening to a podcast called Best of the Left, which is discussing the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, the deficit, the lousy economy and high unemployment.  It’s not making me very hopeful for where I’ll be next year.  It makes me want to hurry to finish my book and screenplay so I can go to work without these projects nagging at me to find time for them.  It also makes me want to buy lottery tickets.

The Schedule

Summer at Stapleton

One thing that’s absolutely essential when you work at home is a schedule.  It’s also important if you want to eat well because you’re dieting or diabetic (or both).  And it’s important if you’re thinking of going back to work and need to get into the habit of getting up early and going to bed early.  I’m finding also that it’s important if you want to lift your depression.

I had a schedule when I was working at home and Hal was alive.  I lost it when he died because so much of each day was taken up with grieving.  Since I came to Denver, I haven’t been able to keep a schedule .  However, all that is changing.

Part of the reason I’m doing better is that my doctor increased my dose of Wellbutrin, so I feel as though I have more energy.  Part of it is the classes I’m taking at Colorado Free University and the writers workshops I’m participating in.  I have to have pages ready every week.  Part of it is the new blog I’m keeping, my new secret project.

I begin to see now how much of my energy problem was due to NOT having a regular schedule.  So the Wellbutrin gives me the energy to keep a schedule, which gives me the energy to get a little exercise in–it’s like a feedback loop, and the end result is that I feel less depressed.  (That presents the problem of what will I do when it’s time to quit taking anti-depressants, but I’m not going to worry about that right now.)

I will not be going to work for the FBI.  I’m not sure how disappointed I am about that.  It means that I can keep writing my story.  I have the time and energy to write it and no one telling me I’m not allowed to write it.  It would have been nice, though; it was a great job with a great salary and benefits package, and I would have gotten all I needed to make my story sound authentic.  Ah, well.

I joined another critique group.  I wonder if I’m not a little foolish in doing that since the last group I was in depressed me so much.  I would drive home in tears after every meeting.  The new group has a couple of differences from the last one, however.  First, it meets during the day, which means I won’t already be tired when I get there.  Second, we will be submitting our pages a few days ahead of the meeting, which I hope will result in better critiques.  The group meets in Boulder, a half-hour away, but it will be worth the drive if it works out.

I can feel myself getting it together a little at a time.  It’s been a long three years of grieving over Hal, and I haven’t been patient with myself.  (As I write this, I can hear my best friend Cyd, whom I lost in 2009, telling me to be patient with myself–what a wise woman she was.)  So many times I’ve tried to convince myself that I was done, that I needed to move on, that I only had to be more determined, to try a little harder.  I’ve felt the weeks and months slide by while I’ve done nothing but watch my bank balance shrink.  I’ve been afraid that I will never recover, that my money will run out and I’ll end up dependent on a sister for food and a place to sleep.

I’ve begun to feel lately that all this might be ending soon.  I might finally be ready to work, to play, to live.  But not to love–not yet.  Intellectually, I know I will be someday, but emotionally, I just can’t imagine it.